TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - Season Two

Shoulda got Vera Lynn

had to google my banter quote to remember when i made it and hoo boy those there were fancy free days
felt like i was just riding my motorbike a hundred miles an hour... in the dark...

(in reality i was just a fat redhead who got his sneakers cut up)

All this Lera Lynn promotion and there isn't even a good-sounding version of the Nick Cave closing-credits cover out there?

Second episode was better than the first, but if I have to listen to that goddamn singer every goddamn week I may just bail out.

Ray "Rip" Velcoro

― slam dunk, Friday, June 12, 2015 6:57 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Opening scene a bit silly. Enjoyed the rest quite a bit. Great last few minutes. Sure is hard to make out what everyone is saying sometimes.

that was better but there was still some baaaaad stuff in there

last scene was fantastic

Yeah, Vaughn's childhood sob story could fuck right off.

that was just so....writing prompt

gonna go ahead and guess rock salt

I know it won't run more than another season, at least as a single writer show, but I hope there's a half a dozen seasons of this show. I love this shit.

I mean killing off the only good actor is ep 2 would take some serious balls. The lines they give to Vaughn and Kitch are just...

"You do good on this we'll make you investigator"

"When this is over, can I just go back on the bike"

ha ha ryan otm; this being bad, non-stop bad for the first half, isn't remotely offputting. though it's sad that it isn't funnier because it's good when it's funny.

but hey it got good halfway through i think. the first half was so frustrating; it's like starting a bad 800p novel, just groaning under the multiple arcs, skimming ill-thought-out dialogue, trying to concentrate through while information is poured into your head. it's so nice being at a point where you can actually look at the characters, now, after it skipped around so frenetically for the first half hour; all of them could be interesting (okay maybe not vaughan) if we were just able to spend a few seconds looking at them w/o being suffocated by exposition, like farrell standing & processing everything his wife said, taylor kitsch watching the cruising, rachel mcadams watching porn.

vaughan's so disappointing though. he's so lifeless. there's no flesh. it's weird having scenes of him trying to muscle farrell by making eyes at him in the bar when he's such a blank.

he reminds me of jack donaghy carrying two coffee cups

always accessorised w/ either a suit or a goon, really poorly cast

nb some subtitles i wanna throw out there for consideration

True Detective: Dong Wound
True Detective: Yonic Gems
True Detective: Sex Raven

re: Vaughn, i think when you try to think about the character as written then Frank actually seems pretty fascinating. haunted, intellectual or at least thoughtful, keeping up appearances, right thinking: "don't talk like that." but it's really hard to imagine an actor that could pull that off, let alone someone as limited as vaughn. anyway it's not sinking the show at all for me. and fwiw this episode was really good all the way through on a second watch (I have to watch twice or i dont know what's happening).

if Ray really is dead (and he seems pretty dead unless it's rock salt as noted above) then that last scene with Ani was pretty poignant too--a confession, giving her the lead she needs to solve this before shuffling off stage.

parental themes all over the place, even the way Frank treats Ray as a stern and maybe even caring father: "im lining things up for you."

I think Frank needed an actor who can above all radiate a kind of extreme maturity (if that's the word i want, I'm not sure, "gravitas" isn't it either). vaughn seems to playing it as a guy who is himself playing at maturity.

yeah i don't really know what's happening; the first half was so busy, & the cutting really kills it for me. i thought the scene in the car was really excellent btw.

& it's just weird how little vaughan's doing with it. there's a really good marc maron interview with him, done in front of a crowd, where he's this quick, quick, kind of sharp, big asshole, like ultra-charmingly make you feel like shit & then slap you on the back guy. & it's just so clinical how he sorta hovers around, as if on an invisible segway, buttoned into a suit wearing a death mask.

p sure nic pizzolatto's word processing software should freeze as soon as he types [INT. TRAILER - NIGHT] but kitsch is still really good in this to me. the kinda gratuitously knotty & intriguing backstory points - like him fucking aliens for minimum wage at blackwater - all seem more interesting to me now.

definitely a kelsey grammer role no doubt

bodes really well if ray's dead, feel like regrettably but then also enjoyably, i can have it both ways, he probably is not dead, his family were probably too extravagant a red herring to be so folded into it

xps ha! a motherfucker with some dark secrets.

also i kinda liked the break up scene a lot? the way it instantly escalated from casual argument to extreme hostility to recriminations. it felt real.

some weird editing for sure. one cut that really stuck on on second viewing was that ray is shown looking at something and it cuts to the pool of blood shot from the *other* side of the room. too disorienting to not be intentional.

lol @ Rick Springfield in this

He looked like Benedict Cumberbstch playing Rob Lowe's character from Behind the Candelabra

ha i don't know. i think it's generally really confused, & kinda hops around impatiently, like while they're driving, or during a three-way conversation w/the drunk guy. the last scene - HEY, with the visible ARAKI photobook spine - was really interesting, i thought, & it's kind of reassuring that this time around it's a show where the investigation involves whatever was recorded onto an external hard drive, instead of how a bunch of twigs were bundled together in a collapsing barn.

i think i am less automatically enamoured of aerial shots than some people but the difference in tone & satisfaction in neighbourliness between orange streetlights & blue-white industrial floodlighting was really lovely to look at.

ha. i was thinking martin short in inherent vice.

he's been serviceable but im looking forward to lin's three ep run being over after next week.

xps: also martin short in unbreakable kimmy schmidt

Yeah Vaughn was prob best in the scene when he was being a menacing smart ass to the dude who just got his ass beat by Vaughn's thugs

i don't think vaughn is terrible.

i'm forcing myself to enjoy this & tbh just don't yet, yet its strangeness exerts kind of fascination

if ray is dead like psycho twist, will have to applaud at least the balls

car conversation between ray & antigone had potential for great something i didn't really feel (on 1st watch at least)

but "i’m trying to fake transparency between us"-- obv one of the big themes here

vaughn's character is interesting to me, but wd be so much better if vaughn allowed some like vaughness into it

everybody's so grim & sober (even if drunk)

the obvious scars/ wounds too foregrounded in every character, like there's nothing else to them

It's improving.

"Fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands" is the show's first zinger. I like McAdams' backstory as well.

Vaughn hasn't done much but I suspect he's slow-playing a role that will require heavy lifting in later episodes.

Don't find Kitsch as closeted gay interesting at all, although the incest vibes are provocative.

Final scene's detour into David Lynch territory was excellent.

I've been waiting to start this, but I just saw the screencap of Springfield and I don't know if it makes me want to catch up immediately or never.

After Ray gets shot, the killer takes a dump in his shoes.

"a little too close to sucking robot’s dick"

^not necessarily meant to be endorsement of that line, just noting that antigone is vaper & show is self-aware of that

I'll add one more comparison point for Rick Springfield (who I totally didn't recognize): Gary Oldman in Hannibal. (I actually thought it was Benedict Cumberbatch.)

Also Kevin bacon in Behind the candelabra

i missed the gay impliciation w/kitsch, it's possible i go into a fugue state whenever i can tell the scene is about nothing other than how messed up the detectives are.

some otm stuff above, i was getting interested in vaughan's character but vaughan himself has been a disaster.

i actually don't think Vaughn is *that* bad either

kitsch breakup scene was great - "you're doing this"

I forgot at first, but I watched last season often w/ closed captions turned on & it helps a lot to figure out dialogue imo

If what they have to offer is a slowly developing mystery plot with the occasional insanity and laughably bad dialogue I might just finally watch hemlock grove s2 instead

Now THAT'S got some carcosa in it

some of the shit in this show if they just dialed it back a lil maybe like my dad locked me in the basement okay thats sort of interesting FOR FOUR DAYS AND RATS ATE ME

cmon

everyone has v nice haircuts tho i noticed this last ep

the best character so far is the mayor

if farrell is dead does that mean adams and kitsch are the true detectives? riding around in a car together not talking, occasionally he says i wanna get back on the bike then she stabs him